
Glass :___, 

Book ■_■ > iJ on 



NO JUST CAUSE FOR A DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION IN ANY THING 
WHICH HAS HITHERTO HAPPENED ; BUT THE UNION THE ONLY SECURITY 
FOR SOUTHERN RIGHTS. 



AN ORATION, 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE CITIZENS OF TUSCALOOSA, ALA., 



JULY 4tli, 1851; 



BY F. A. P. BARNARD, M.A., 



M 



13 



m 



j , Professor of Cliemistry and Natural History in the University of Alabama. 

i i 

5 i 



FURNISHED FOR PUBLICATION BY REQUEST 



OF THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THE CITY. 



Cuscaloosia : 



PRINTED BY 3. "W. & 3. F. WARREN, "OBSERVER OFFICE." 



1851. 



y.'^ 



fii^mmS SiSiSS^& ^^^^^ 



w 



I 



NO JUST CAUSE FOR A DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION IN ANY THING 
WHICH HAS HITHERTO HAPPENED ; BUT THE UNION THE ONLY SECURITY 
FOR SOITTHERN RIGHTS. 



AN ORATIOK 



"77 



V^ 



DET.IVERED BEFORE 



THE CITIZENS OF TUSCALOOSA, ALA., 



JULY 4tli, 1851; 

BY F. At T.° BARNARD, M.A., 

Professor of Chemistry and Natural History in the University of Alabama. 



^:>^x^- 



FURNISHED FOR PUBLICATION BY REQUEST 



OF THK MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THE CITY. 



Cusicaloosia : 



PRINTED BY J. W. & J. F. AVARREN "OBSERVER OFFICE. 



1851. 



-v 



A >- 



(b^' 



ORATION. 



Fellow Citizens : 

We are assembled to celebrate the seventy-fifth return 
of the birthday of American liberty. Three quarters 
of a century ago this day, the thirteen united colonies of 
Great Britain on this continent declared themselves ab- 
solved from all further allegiance to the British crown. 
Seven years later, at, the close of an exhausting war, they 
found themselves reduced to the lowest extremity of 
national distress. All private enterprise was paralyzed 
and blasted, and a frightful depreciation had fallen upon 
all the evidences of the public debt. The new States, 
still in the feebleness of their infancy, and now miserably 
debilitated by years of wasting warfare, lay widely scat- 
tered along a thousand miles of coast, and still half en- 
veloped in the original forest. Intercommunication was 
slow and dif^cult. There is not one of them which is not 
virtually nearer to the European continent at this day 
than they were then to their nearest neighbors. Though 
nominally united in a species of compact entered into 
for the common defence, they found themselves wholly 
unable to arrange any common scheme for raising up the 
broken fortunes of the country —for repairing its ruined 
credit, or stimulating into new life its prostrate industry. 
A few years of disheartening Experience were sufficient 
to produce a universal conviction, that something must 
be done to harmonize their distracted counsels and give 
unity to their efforts for the common weal. Out of this 
conviction sprung the measures which resulted in the 
ultimate adoption of the present federal constitution. 

It is no part of my purpose, to-day, to indulge in 
eulogy of this noble instrument. We have been permit- 
ted to see what, in little more than sixty years of trial, it 
has done for a people, whom it found at the lowest ebb 
of national depression, and whom it has raised to the 



4 
highest pitch of national grandeur. The world never 
before witnessed a progress so stupendous. Other 
nations have risen on the ruins of their rivals, and gath- 
ered strength by reducing all around them to weakness. 
Their wealth has been steeped in the tears of the plun- 
dered, and their glories have been stained by the blood of 
the slain. Crushed beneath the conquering car of Alex- 
ander, the far East crouched at the feet of Imperial 
Macedon ; and borne down by the ferocious legions of 
Caesar, the West received the yoke of Imperial Rome. 
Far different has been ^the march of the American Re- 
public. She, too, has made her conquests, but it has 
been forests which have bowed, mountain barriers which 
have been laid low, and rocky fastnesses which have sur- 
rendered at her resistless approach. No subjugated 
monarchs have worn her shackles or swelled the train of 
her triumphal processions. She has imposed her chains 
upon the elements themselves, and constrained the powers 
of nature to pay her tribute. Her domain looks out on 
one side toward the broad Atlantic, and on the other 
rests upon the shores of the great South Sea. Her eagle 
sweeps uninterrupted from ocean to ocean, and as he 
hovers over the land he symbolizes, dips a wing in either 
wave. There is no sea where her canvas is not spread to 
the breeze, no land to which her enterprising sons have 
not conveyed the knowledge of her greatness. The civ- 
ilized world stands viewing with amazement her gigantic 
strides in the path to supremacy. Admitted but yester- 
day into the family of nations, among whom she was 
esteemed to hold the very humblest rank, she disputes 
to-day with Britain the sovereignty of the seas, and 
divides with empires of a thousand years the dominion 
of the land. 

These are no words of idle boasting strung together to 
amuse you, or to flatter that inordinate vanity of which 
our countrymen have been accused. That which has 
been esteemed the peculiar vocation of the American 
village orator has ceased to be. Europe herself has 
wrested from his liand the glowing pen, and has usurped 
at once his functions of chronicler and prophet. In evi- 



5 

dence of the spirit which at length begins to pervade the 

speculations of British writers upon American progress, I 

quote the following from the London Athcnceuni : 

" The American census is not yet complete ; but the returns already 
received point to conclusions far beyond hope or expectation. Look at 
New York, for instance. In 1820 it had a population of 123,000 ; in 1830, 
203,000 ; in 1840, 312,000. This rate of increase was unparallelled in the 
history of statistics. But the population is now said to have risen to the 
astonishing number of 750,000 ! This includes the suburb of Brooklyn, 
etc. There are but two larger cities in Europe ; in ten years more, at 
the same rate of progress, it will be larget than Paris. In thirty years 
from this date New York will, on the same terms, be larger than London. 

" And it must considered that the commercial capital of America is not 
fed, like our Manchester and Liverpool, at the expense of the country ; its 
advance is the type of that of an entire continent. In 1810 the population 
of St. Louis was 1600 ; in 1830, 6600 ; in 1840, 16,400 ; in 1850, it numbered 
90,000 ! So far as the general nature of the returns can be inferred from 
the data at hand, the population of the Union will be about 25,000,000.* 
From the year iSoo, when the number was a little more than 5,000,000, 
to 1840 when it had advanced to 17,000,000, the decimal rate of increase 
was about 33 per cent. This rate would have given for 1850 a popula- 
tion of 22,000,000 only. 

"Material power has been developed equally with population. Great 
Britain alone excepted, no state in Europe could now maintain equal arm- 
aments in the field for any length of time. This marvellous growth is 
deranging all the old tradition of ' balances of power.' America is not 
only a first-class state— in a few years, if no internal disorder shall 
occur, she will be the greatest of all. Should the 1S40-50 rate of increase 
be maintained for fifty years, the population will then amount to more 
than ioo,oO(.,ooo! German umrs and French revolutions sink into complete 
insignificance by the side of considerations like these. 

" With such a comment, how well we may understand the ' roars of 
laughter' with which the American Senate recently received the menaces 
of Austria ! When the United States shook off the yoke of England, 
their people numbered no more than 3,000,000 ; when they were last 
measured against a European power they were not more than 8,000,000. 
Ten years hence they will be equal to France or Austria. There hardly 
seems to be a limit to their growth. The valley of the Mississippi would 
alone support the whole population of Europe. In its vast basin, nations 
are now growing up as if at the bidding of enchantment." 

These are the words of an intelligent European in 
speaking of the future of America. One sentence of the 
passage deserves, especially at this moment, to be deeply 
pondered by every sincere friend of civil and political lib- 
erty. "America, ' ' says the writer, ' ' is not only a first-class 
state — in a few years, if no internal disorder occurs, she 
will be the greatest of all." Is this not a thing to be 
desired ? Let us see. America stands before the world 
to-day, the sole champion of those inestimable principles 
of popular government on the prevalence of which de- 
pends the redemption of a world from political bondage. 

* These numbers are not rigidly accurate, but sufficiently so for the purpose of the illus- 
tration. 



To her welcoming arms are now fleeing, year after year, 
thousands and tens of thousands of the down-trodden 
victims of European tyranny ; and beneath her protect- 
ing flag are gathering the hundreds of gallant, generous- 
hearted, but unfortunate patriots whom the fiendish 
malignity which rules by right divine has hunted with 
whips of scorpions from their homes. The crushed and 
bruised spirits who remain yield for the time to a despot- 
ism from which there is no immediate deliverance ; but 
in their stolen moments of secret communion they 
breathe to each other the name of America, and feel that, 
while she survives, there is still hope for them. Their 
hearts by day go forth across the waters to meet our 
sympathies, and when at night they bend the knee to 
Jieaven, their prayers ascend to God for blessings on that 
starry banner in the West, at the very rustling of whose 
folds their task-masters tremble in their palaces. 

That the smothered fire which now burns restlessly 
beneath the surface of society throughout Europe has 
been kindled at the torch of American liberty, must be 
obvious to the most superficial observer. That the 
hopes of those who feed it are kept alive by the example 
of American success, is just as obvious. Let the hal- 
lowed light expire, of which heaven has made us the 
guardians, and these cherished hopes will all be swallowed 
up in the blackness of despair. The hour of deliverance, 
for which millions are eagerly panting, will again be 
postponed ; and the shadow will go backward upon the 
dial of freedom, perhaps for centuries. 

But this is not all. When America shall have become 
the leading power of the earth, when her sons shall num- 
ber one hundred millions of freemen and the population 
of her Mississippi valley alone shall outnumber half a 
dozen European monarchies, she will be not merely the 
example and the encouragement, but the powerful pro- 
tector of the wretched and oppressed. She will no longer 
permit herself to be a passive spectator of events that 
affect the happiness of the whole human race. She will 
not patiently see a new-born republic stifled in its infancy, 
as recently in Rome, because it is an eyesore to kings ; 



nor a gallant people ground into the dust, as recently in 
Hungary, because they dare to vindicate their immemo- 
rial rights. She may not undertake a Quixotic crusade 
of political propagandism, nor seek to thrust free institu- 
tions upon such as hug their chains and kiss the hand 
that smites them ; but surely, surely, she will no more 
suffer venerable age to be brutally massacred, or defence- 
less beauty to be stripped and lashed in the public 
streets, by the fiendish Haynaus of another century. She 
will permit no monarchical reactions enforced at the 
point of the bayonet ; and tolerate no conspiracies of 
tyrants, at Warsaw, or at Dresden, or at Olmutz, how 
they may best hold a continent in c4iains. Every foot of 
territory fairly redeemed from despotism by the bravery 
of its inhabitants shall, in the shadow of her powerful 
protection, be consecrated to liberty forever ; and it 
shall fare ill with him, be he tyrant or tyrant's blood- 
hound, who shall dare again to plot against its peace. 

And yet there are not wanting those among us who 
would arrest this majestic Republic in the fulfilment of 
her sublime mission ; who would shatter it into frag- 
ments, and give it over to anarchy, confusion, and ruin. 
There are not wanting men so false to liberty, to 
humanity, and to heaven that they would draw down 
upon this smiling land all the horrors of civil war, and 
fight, in effect, the battles of tyranny upon a soil conse- 
crated to freedom. At both extremities of the Union 
we hear that glorious Constitution, under whose benig- 
nant influences a nation has been born in a day, made a 
continual subject of reviling and bitterness. On the one 
hand it is denounced as an instrument conceived in sin 
and a compact made with hell ; and on the other, stig- 
matized as a monstrous engine of tyranny, unworthy to 
be the charter of a free people. So familiarized have we 
become to language like this, that it has ceased to shock 
our sensibilities, and almost to attract our attention. It 
is deliberately proposed and earnestly advocated, all 
around us, that with sacrilegious hands we should tear 
down the temple of liberty which shelters us and bury 
ourselves beneath its ruins, and the public listens to the 



demoniac suggestion with calmness and composure. It 
is even possible for an American citizen publicly to urge a 
desecration of this very Sabbath of liberty, to a purpose 
so atrocious, so shocking, so absolutely horrible, as that 
of entrapping little children into a public and solemn 
league, to grow up sworn traitors to the Government 
which protected their infancy. This has been actually 
done, not one month since, in a leading organ of disunion 
in a State not far distant ; and the press which uttered 
the abomination still stands — still stands to repeat daily 
other propositions scarcely less atrocious and abom- 
inable — propositions to intimidate the weak, to ostra- 
cize the independent, and to damn every man whose birth 
has not been beneath the palmetto. From the Charles- 
ton Mercury of June nth I quote the following sugges- 
tion by a correspondent : ' ' That the coming anniversary 
of the Declaration of Independence should be made use of 
by our young friends (boys from the age of nine years and 
upwards) to form Southern Rights Associations ; and to 
swear upon the altar of their country (I mean the South 
only) their devoted, eternal, and never-dying hatred to 
our infamously aggressive, oppressive, and fanatical Gov- 
ernment." A more fiendish proposition never emanated 
from the bottomless pit. 

And now, to what is all this deep-seated bitterness 
owing ? I need not be told what is the immediate cause 
of its present manifestations. I have no need to hear 
again the story of the repeated and frequent intermcd- 
dlings with affairs of strictly domestic interest, in which 
the North has been the assailant and the South the suf- 
ferer. That hostility and even rancor should have 
sprung up among us toward the people of the North, on 
this account, can hardly be considered surprising. But 
the aggressions and threats of aggression have proceeded 
mainly from private individuals, or voluntary associa- 
tions, actuated by a spirit of fanaticism, and clothed with 
no political character whatever. The efforts made to 
introduce this species of agitation into politics have been 
rewarded by no substantial successes. On the other 
hand, in a fair trial of strength, during the lifetime of the 



9 
last Congress, political abolitionism has been substanti- 
ally defeated, and State after State has withdrawn the 
legislation which has previously and justly given offence 
to the South. At this very moment the entire energies 
of the Federal Government are put in action to secure 
the faithful execution of the law which has been regard- 
ed as a test of its sincerity of purpose, and the local 
authorities, wherever called upon, as recently in Boston, 
have earnestly co-operated to the same end. Whatever 
bitterness of feeling, therefore, individual or associated 
agitation or resistance at the North may have been cal- 
culated to awaken in the South, there is nothing in all 
this to call for or to justify denunciations of the organic 
law of the land. If we have been injured in this respect, 
it has not been the Federal Constitution which has injured 
us, if we have suffered wrong, the wrong has not come 
from the hand of the Federal Government. There are, I 
believe, causes much deeper than this for that war which 
has been waged to the knife against the Union which 
has secured to us as a people so glorious a name among 
the nations of the earth — causes, however, which are so 
misunderstood in their origin, that the remedy so often 
appealed to for their removal would only serve to per- 
petuate their disastrous effects. 

The soreness of feeling, however, produced in the 
Southern mind by the infringement of undeniable 
rights and the interference with strictly private affairs, 
to which I have alluded, has been seized upon by agita- 
tors as the most available means of accomplishing their 
ulterior designs. On this account they have spared no 
effort to stimulate it into rancor and goad it on to mad- 
ness. It would occupy a volume to point out and ex- 
pose the various modes in which this has been done. A 
single instance will suffice. It has been affirmed and 
reaffirmed that the organized associations for preying 
upon Southern property were stealing away annually 
thousands of your most efficient laborers. The enormous 
sums thus yearly detracted from Southern wealth have 
been paraded in staring capitals before your eyes. One 
hundred thousand fugitives in the free States at this 



lO 

moment has been the smallest number that would satisfy 
the moderate estimates of the experimenters on your 
credulity- — and these, being drawn from among the 
strong, vigorous, and able to run, have been assumed to 
represent a sum total of plunder amounting to $50,000,- 
000. Now what says the Census of 1850? There are not 
tivo hundred thousand free negroes in all the free States 
put together. And for twenty years this population has 
been nearly stationary. Since 1840, the natural in- 
crease, with all the imaginary fugitives added, has been 
about eight per cent, while the natural increase of that 
portion of the colored race held as your property has 
been more than twenty-two per cent. The white popu- 
lation, North, has, in the meantime, increased twenty- 
eight per cent, and in the South at a rate still higher. 

These simple statistics are sufficient to show how abso- 
lute a piece of manufacture for the occasion have been 
the statements put forth on this subject by agitators to 
delude you. And to all this class of efforts to produce 
alarm, and generate excitement, in the South, may be 
opposed the calm and dispassionate judgment of the 
sagacious and prudent statesman who has represented 
your sovereignty in the national councils ever since Ala- 
bama became a State, that " there is less danger of en- 
croachments upon Southern rights (now) than at any 
time for the last twenty years." 

What then is the true secret of this revolutionary mad- 
ness ? Public men in a State not ver^' distant have not 
scrupled openly to avow that they have been living and 
laboring for twenty or twenty-five years past with no 
other earthly object but the dissolution of the Union of 
these States. Yet, according to these very men, the 
dangerous encroachments upon your rights, which they 
so indignantly denounce and so eloquently adjure you 
to resist, date back no farther than the year 1835. 
Twenty years ago, then, the war on your institutions had 
not yet opened ; but something Jiad happened twenty 
years ago which you would do well to remember. 

The tariff act of 1828 had hardly gone into operation 
before an agitation on the subject began, in South Caro- 



II 

lina and elsewhere, carried on by the aid of all the machin- 
ery which politicians know so well how to employ. So 
early as September, 1830, a general State Rights Con- 
vention was assembled in Columbia, which ended as 
usual in an inflammatory address to the people. These 
local evidences of dissatisfaction produced, however, but 
slight impression on the country ; and none whatever 
upon its general policy ; for, on the 14th day of July, 
1832, President Jackson afifixed his signature to a new 
tariff act, retaining every stringent and offensive feature 
of the former, which had been known, and is still, in the 
vocabulary of nullification, as the bill of abominations. 

On the 25th of October, in the same year, the Legisla- 
ture of South Carolina-called a convention of the people, 
to assemble at Columbia in the following month, for the 
purpose of taking into consideration the obnoxious laws 
of the Federal Government then existing, or any others 
which might be subsequently passed ; and of devising 
means of redress. On the 19th of November, this con- 
vention assembled, and proceeded to pass an ordinance, 
declaring both the acts of 1828 and 1832 null and void 
within the State of South Carolina ; and naming the first 
of February, 1833, as the day on which this ordinance 
should take effect. On the loth day of December General 
Jackson put forth his famous proclamation, declaring his 
intention to execute the laws of Congress at every hazard, 
and solemnly warning the people of South Carolina of 
the inevitable consequences of resistance. On the first 
of March, the great pacificator, Henry Clay, had the 
satisfaction of seeing his tariff compromise become the 
law of the land ; and, on the same day, the bill to pro- 
vide for the more effectual execution of the revenue laws, 
commonly called the force-bill, passed the House of 
Representatives. On the nth of the same month the 
State convention of South Carolina reassembled. Though 
the law of Mr. Clay provided but for a very slow and 
gradual removal of the burthens complained of, but held 
out the certain prospect of nine years more of endurance, 
yet this body, finding itself uncheered by a whisper of 
aid or comfort from without, was constrained to repeal 



12 

the ordinance of nullification. As a salvo to the wound- 
ed pride of the State, it, at the same time, solemnly 
nullified the force-bill ; a proceeding which, considering 
that no obstruction was contemplated to the execution 
of the laws, was trivial and nugatory. 

This series of events is what took place twenty years 
ago. In this unfortunate and fruitless struggle it was, 
between a self-willed State and the Government of the 
Union, that first originated that fixed and settled pur- 
pose to overthrow the Constitution, which has been so 
long secretly cherished, and which is now openly avow- 
ed.* The original cause of disaffection has been merged 
in bitter hatred of a Government whose fundamental 
principle is that a minority shall not rule. And now 
what was this cause ? It is to be sought for, not in any 
dissatisfaction with the generally beneficial results which 
the Constitution has wrought out for the Union as a 
whole, but rather in a conviction that the benefits have 
been unequally distributed. Such a conviction has been, 
is probably at this moment, partaken by very many who 
feel no disposition to rush into disunion as a remedy. 
Indeed the impression seems extensively to exist, that, 
by the operation of the Federal Constitution, through 
Federal legislation, the South has been made, in some 
sort, tributary to the North. The nature of the feeling 
cannot be better illustrated than by the following extract 
from an article which appeared in an Alabama news- 
paper about two years ago : 

" At present, the North fattens and grows rich upon the South. We 
depend upon it for our entire supplies. We purchase all our luxuries and 
necessaries from the North 

" With us, every branch and pursuit in life, every trade, profession, and 
occupation, is dependent upon the North ; for instance, the Northerners 
abuse and denounce slavery and slaveholders, vet our slaves are clothed 
with Northern manufactured goods, have Northern hats and shoes, work 
with Northern hoes, ploughs, and other implements, are chastised with 
a Northern-made instrument, arc working for Northern more than South- 
ern profit. The slaveholder dresses in Northern goods, rides a North- 
ern saddle with all the other accoutrements, sports his Northern carriage, 
patronizes Northern newspapers, drinks Northern liquors, reads North- 
ern books, spends his money at Northern watering-places, crowds North- 
ern fashionable resorts ; in short, his person, his slaves, his farm, his neces- 
saries, his luxuries — as he walks, rides, sleeps, loafs, lounges, or works, 
he is surrounded with articles of Northern origin. The aggressive acts 

* Sec note A. 



13 

upon his rights and his property'arouse his resentment— and on Northern- 
made paper, with a Northern pen, with Northern ink, he resolves and re- 
resolves in regard to his rights ! In Northern vessels his products are 
carried to market, his cotton is ginned with Northern gins, his sugar is 
crushed and preserved by Northern machinery ; his rivers are navigated 
by Northern steamboats, his mails are carried in Northern stages, his 
negroes are fed with Northern bacon, beef, flour, and corn ; his land is 
cleared with a Northern axe, and a Yankee clock sits upon his mantel- 
piece ; his floor is swept by a Northern broom, and is covered with a 
Northern carpet ; and his wife dresses herself in a Northern looking- 
glass ; his child cries for a Northern toy, crows over a Northern shoe, 
and is perfectly happy in having a Northern knife ; his son is educated 
at a Northern college, his daughter receives the finishing polish at a 
Northern seminary ; his doctor graduates at a Northern medical college, 
his schools are supplied with Northern teachers, and he is furnished with 
Northern inventions and notions." 

Will it not just possibly occur to thinking minds that all 
these complaints may be well-founded and just, and yet 
their causes not in the slightest degree attributable to the 
American Constitution ? May it not also occur, that if 
the evils complained of have not their origin in the im- 
puted source, a violent disruption of the Union can bring 
no remedy ? Is it not worth while to consider whether 
all the elements of human happiness are not as much 
within our own reach as in that of our Northern 
brethren, and that, if we do not use them within the 
Union, there is just as little reason for believing that we 
shall do so out of it ? 

Let us examine the case, for a moment, by the light of 
philosophy, and inquire what there is in our circumstances 
to prevent the South from becoming as great, as good, and 
in all respects as happy a people as the world ever saw. 

Numerous elements contribute to the sum of human 
happiness.. Highest in point of dignity among these we 
should properly place intelligence, intellectual cultiva- 
tion, virtuous principle, practical morality, religious free- 
dom, and personal and political liberty. No one will 
complain that the Constitution affects us unequally in 
regard to any of these things. But this is not all. Hap- 
piness presumes, further, immunity from want, and the 
possession of such of the comforts and luxuries of life as 
shall secure not only freedom from positive physical suf- 
fering, but a reasonable amount of positive physical en- 
joyment. The aggregate of such possessions in the 
hands of the people constitutes national wealth. 



14 

If the Constitution of the Union be assumed to affect 
us unfavorably, therefore, in any point essential to na- 
tional happiness, the presumption must be that, through 
its influence, we suffer in our pecuniary interests. And 
indeed the burden of all the complaints we hear on this 
subject, from whatever quarter uttered, is precisely 
this — by our union with the North we are impoverished 
by her union with us she is enriched. That these 
propositions are in one sense true, is undeniable. What 
I propose, however, to prove is, that the connection be- 
tween the North and the South, which has brought about 
results so dissimilar, is not the political union ; that for 
the evils of which we complain, the downfall of the Con- 
stitution could bring no remedy ; but that all the causes 
of our deficient prosperity are wholly unconnected with 
legislation, are within our own control, and removable at 
our own free-will. 

And first a word as to the true dignity of wealth. Do 
we not magnify its importance, and, by exhibiting so 
sensitive a spirit in regard to it, do we not manifest a 
mercenary disposition ? I think not. As a means of indi- 
vidual happiness, wealth would indeed seem to occupy a 
very low rank. But in communities wealth is, certainly, 
to a considerable extent, essential to the existence of an 
elevated tone of morality. Poverty in isolated cases is, 
no doubt, often found to co-exist with the highest purity 
of virtue, and the nearest approach to the beauty of holi- 
ness of which human nature is capable ; but all experi- 
ence has shown that the same is not equally true of 
great masses of men in society. 

The reasons for the difference may be more numerous 
than it would be convenient here to analyze ; but there 
are two so especially prominent, that they cannot be left 
unnoticed. And first, wherever the presence of want 
compels a whole community to expend all their energies 
in providing for the animal man, the general mind is kept 
down to the level of the labor, and man is degraded from 
his dignity as an intellectual being. I lis thoughts are bent, 
perforce, upon the task which occupies his hands, or the 
contingent evils which may spring out of its unsuccessful 



15 

execution. He has no time to devote to his own intel- 
lectual cultivation, or to the proper training of the tender 
minds of his offspring. The means are wanting to him- 
self, and to his companions in penury, to provide those 
facilities for the general education of the young, which, 
in more favored communities, fill up in great measure 
the deficiency of parental care. Under circumstances 
like these a depression of the standard of national 
morality is all but inevitable, and the universal preva- 
lence of intellectual darkness becomes a settled certainty. 

The barriers against vice and crime being thus weak- 
ened, it is secondly to be remembered that with want 
comes temptation of the most dangerous kind. If fraud 
and treachery, if craft and cunning, if violence and blood- 
shed, cannot be excluded from communities in the en- 
joyment of every physical comfort, and provided with 
every means of mental, moral, and religious culture, what 
can be expected of a people to whom all these securities 
are wanting, and whom present and urgent necessity is 
ever goading on to crime ? In illustration of these obser- 
vations what more is necessary than to point to op- 
pressed, unhappy, and down-trodden Ireland ! 

It appears, therefore, that, to a certain extent, the 
possession of wealth is essential to the security of other 
and higher elements of national happiness. But it is 
more. It is essential to all progress in civilization, in 
refinement, in knowledge, in scientific discovery, in every 
useful and in every ornamental art. It is essential to 
that first condition, necessary to render progress of any 
kind whatever possible — the exclusive devotion of the 
labor of Some at least in a community to other pursuits 
beside the personal preparation of the means of sustain- 
ing life. And in proportion as the labor of a larger 
number is turned into other and various channels, in the 
same proportion will the arts receive their development, 
and the comforts and elegances of social life be multi- 
plied. 

It is not, therefore, without reason that nations strive, 
and ought to strive, for the increase of the general 
wealth. That which in an individual would be covetous- 



i6 

ness or avarice, is not such in communities ; it is a laud- 
able ambition to secure the instrument, by which are to 
be most effectually promoted the highest interests of man 
as a rational and a moral being. 

But wealth is not of spontaneous growth. It is the 
offspring of never-ceasing industry. So true is this, that 
it has not in itself even the principle of permanence when 
produced. Our possessions of to-day are wasting before 
our eyes. Let us for a moment fold our arms in idle- 
ness, and " our poverty will come upon us as one that 
traveleth, and our want as an armed man." Ten years 
from this time we may be as rich or richer than to-day ; 
but our wealth of to-day will in great part have perished, 
to give place to other possessions as ephemeral as these. 
The seeming permanence or fluctuation of a nation's 
wealth is, therefore, but a visible index of the degree 
of steadiness of its industry, or the skill and judgment 
with which its labor is applied. 

This last suggestion brings me to the point which I 
have been preparing to approach. It is not enough that, 
in order to be wealthy, a people should be industrious — 
it is necessary that judgment should select the channels 
into which its labor is turned, and skill should preside over 
its immediate application. 

The wants of civilized man are spread over a very wide 
field. The channels of labor have been multiplied almost 
to infinity. Some of these demand, principally, the ex- 
ercise of strength, and are exhausting to the laborer in the 
highest degree ; while so little is required in them of intel- 
lectual activity, or even of manual dexterity, that the 
brute forces of nature may often be substituted for the 
execution of the same work. 

There are other departments of labor for which 
strength is less required, but which demand proportion- 
ately greater skill ; and others still, such as the arts of 
engraving, and the division of mathematical instru- 
ments, in which skill alone is necessary, but skill of the 
highest order. 

Considered as means of producing wealth, these vari- 
ous kinds of labor are very unequally valuable. Those, 



^7 
as a general rule, which require the greatest exertion of 
physical strength are the least productive of all ; and 
those in which the element of skill predominates, the 
most so. The marketable values of the several products 
are out of all proportion to the time, or to the merely 
animal exertion, which has been expended on them. 
The visible wealth of a people will be, therefore, quite as 
much dependent on the direction given to its industry, 
as upon the absolute amount of labor employed to pro- 
duce and sustain it. And an enlightened economy will 
seek, so far as circumstances allow, to introduce and en- 
courage, in every community, those branches of industry 
which are secure of the highest rewards. 

For the lowest and least productive descriptions of 
labor there will always be a demand, and usually an 
abundant supply. The capacities of individuals are as 
various as human pursuits. But it is a perversion of the 
gifts of nature to waste capacities of a superior order 
upon tasks to which all are alike equal, or in which they 
only differ as they differ in animal strength. The mere 
drudgery which society requires may be supplied, and is, 
by a moderate proportion of its members. Beyond this, 
there is room for immense improvement in wealth, by 
the judicious direction of the disposable labor which re- 
mains. To degrade this to the same level is unwise ; to 
leave it wholly unemployed, as is, to a lamentable extent, 
the case with us, is more unwise still. 

That I may better illustrate the application of these 
principles in practice, allow me to make the following 
supposition. Imagine two nations, equally favored by 
nature, equal in numbers, and equal in extent of terri- 
tory. Suppose free communication to exist between 
them ; but let both be cut off from all commerce with 
every other people. Suppose the arts to be with both in 
their infancy ; and that both are occupied, at first, 
mainly with the pursuits rendered necessary by the earliest 
wants of man. The industry of both will, for the most 
part, be expended upon the cultivation of the earth. 
Their earliest garments, dwellings, and implements of 
husbandry will be of the rudest kind. In the midst of 



one of these communities let the spirit of invention be 
awakened. Let superior tools, more comfortable gar- 
ments, and better shelters make their appearance. Let 
new devices be contrived for the promotion of human 
comfort — in short, let the arts spring into birth. Their 
neighbors, still slumbering in intellectual torpor, will 
soon be roused by observing their improved condi- 
tion. They too will naturally desire to partake of the 
same advantages. Two methods will suggest themselves 
for the attainment of this end. The first and simplest is 
to purchase the products of the newly-developed industry ; 
the second, to transplant to their own soil the arts by 
which they were produced. Suppose them, from indo- 
lence or any other cause, to prefer the former. But, in 
order to purchase, they must offer an equivalent. Their 
labor being wholly agricultural, they can propose nothing 
but the productions of the soil. These they may raise in 
greater quantity than their own necessities require ; and 
the surplus they may exchange for the better tools, 
fabrics, and articles of comfort or luxury manufactured 
by their more progressive neighbors. 

What will be the effect upon these last ? The opening 
of a market for their productions will stimulate into 
activity among them a larger amount of labor of the 
higher order hitherto unemployed, and will enable them 
to prosecute improvement in art to higher degrees of 
skill. With every step in advance new additions will be 
made to the means of human happiness. The mind, 
excited to activity by the progress of invention, will pres- 
ently pursue its investigations into the region of science, 
and man will as rapidly rise in the intellectual as in the 
physical scale. 

It will presently appear that the labor of one artisan is 
twice or thrice as valuable as that of an agriculturist ; 
and, consequently, that the wealth of the progressive 
people has become double or triple of what it was at 
first. By the multiplication of objects of use and orna- 
ment the people who have hitherto remained exclu- 
sively agricultural will find their wants increasing, while 
their means remain stationar)'. Nor will the)' even enjoy 



19 
a monopoly in producing the only articles which they 
can employ in international exchanges. For the manu- 
facturing nation has still its soil, and still an adequate 
supply of that humbler kind of capacity which, under an 
intelligent directing head, is able to cause the earth to 
yield her increase. Indeed, the existence of any demand 
for agricultural products from abroad, which the native 
soil is capable of yielding, in great measure arises from 
the fact that, with increasing prosperity, a community 
becomes proportionally lavish in the consumption of the 
good things of this life. 

For the non-manufacturing people to stimulate its 
agricultural industry, and thus increase its production, 
would evidently afford no adequate remedy ; for increas- 
ed production would operate only to depress prices. 

Here, then, we should see, between two nations com- 
mencing under circumstances in all respects equally favor- 
able, and totally unaffected by legislation of any kind 
whatever, the widest contrast in point of prosperity. 
One of them is in the easy enjoyment of every thing 
which art has invented for the promotion of human hap- 
piness, and is rapidly multiplying new comforts and new 
luxuries as time goes on. With physical improvement, 
intellectual development is advancing hand in hand, and 
the measure of the progress of both may be read in the 
rapid expansion of national wealth. The other has re- 
mained stationary ; or rather, its wants having outgrown 
its means, it has become virtually poorer by standing 
still. 

These consequences, I cannot too often repeat, are so 
wholly independent of constitutions and laws, of forms 
of government or their administration, that they would 
occur if we were to suppose our two communities, instead 
of being nations distinctly separated, to be two villages 
side by side. I am far from denying that legislation may 
interfere with the natural and free course of trade — I am 
simply asserting the principle that, in the absence of 
legislation, or under legislation precisely similar, com- 
munities of men, by the direction they give to labor, 
have their prosperity mainly in their own hands. And, 



20 

to allude to a grievance often complained of among us, I 
may here remark, that high duties upon such imported 
articles as can, and upon every principle of wise econ- 
omy ought to be, made at home, are permanently op- 
pressive only in exact proportion as a people are obsti- 
nately resolved not to provide for themselves. 

But the condition of the merely agricultural people 
would become still more unfortunate, if we suppose that 
other nations beside have access to the markets of her 
thriving neighbor, and bring to them similar commodi- 
ties. By such competition she may be depressed still 
lower, if not reduced to absolute distress. 

There is one condition which may except a people ex- 
clusively agricultural from the ruinous operation of this 
general law. It is, that it possess a climate and soil 
capable of yielding, on a large scale, some product indis- 
pensable to its manufacturing neighbors, but which they 
can neither produce themselves, nor obtain in sufficient 
abundance elsewhere. With such a climate and such a 
soil, a people strictly agricultural may be rich, though 
they so heedlessly disregard the economy of labor as to 
purchase a thousand miles from home the simplest in- 
struments with which they stir the ground. They may 
grow rich, though the rude shoes on the feet of their 
laborers and the shirts on their backs may have made a 
journey for their comfort across half a continent. They 
may thus grow rich upon the lavish bounty of Nature 
herself ; in spite of the careless unconcern with which 
they neglect the more exhaustless resources which God 
has given them in their own strong but idle right arms, 
and their naturally acute but slumbering ingenuity. 

But riches thus bestowed, while the means of greater 
riches remain unemployed, will never give contentment. 
The peculiar product of the soil, in the case supposed, 
would have no value were it not capable in the hands of 
labor of assuming a higher value still. This value the 
producer sees imparted to it by men who, having devoted 
themselves in a distant land to no other occupation, 
have apparently no other resource, and who seem, there- 
fore, to be living by his sufferance only. But they do 



21 

not merely live : they accumulate wealth, they build up 
thriving towns — arts flourish and multiply among them, 
and population increases, till the sterile soil beneath 
them, of itself scarcely capable of supporting a handful 
of human beings, swarms everywhere with busy life. 

The producer sees all this. He compares the wealth 
which the raw material has left in his hands, with that 
which has been wrung from it in the process of manu- 
facture, and he almost feels as if he had suffered wrong. 
But this is not all. Confining himself to production 
solely, and leaving even the transportation of the com- 
modity in the hands of others, he presently perceives 
that the merest contact with his wealth enriches, and 
that no - small portion clings to the hands that simply 
handle it. And when, after all this, he applies to the 
very same men to whose prosperity he has already sup- 
plied the life's blood, for all those various articles of 
necessity or use or luxury, which he might have provided 
for himself, but did not, and finds the accumulations of 
one year of labor melting away in provision for another, 
all to the profit of those who have done nothing but 
profit by him from beginning to end, it is not surprising 
that he should become seriously annoyed at a state of 
things in which all the advantages appear to be on one 
side. 

In the imaginary picture which I have thus drawn, it 
seems to me that I have truly described the situation of 
the cotton-producing States of the Union at this mo- 
ment. But if the principles which I have laid down be 
correct, it is utterly visionary to seek a remedy for the 
evil in an interruption of the relations of business be- 
tween the North and the South. By such an interrup- 
tion the North might be seriously injured, but the South 
would have nothing to gain. If she still pursues her 
policy of producing cotton only, and of leaving others to 
manufacture it ; of indulging freely in all the luxuries 
of life, and leaving others to prepare them — nay, more, 
of holding out only discouragement to the intelligent 
labor of white men, while she purchases her pins and 
needles, her screws and gimlets, her knives and ham- 



mers, her broomsticks and hoe-handles, her hicifer 
matches and her baby-jumpers from abroad — I see not, 
for my part, what it can matter to her whether all these 
" notions," which she ought to be ashamed to buy at all, 
are manufactured for her use in the land of the Yankees 
or in the workshops of John Bull. One point of differ- 
ence only is perceptible, and that is in favor of the exist- 
ing arrangement — we obtain them at present free of 
duty. 

This habit, in which we have so long lived, of resort-' 
ing to workshops at a distance for almost every conceiv- 
able article of manufacture, has made us, with all our 
wealth, a dependent people. To a sensitive mind 
nothing is more annoying than a feeling of dependence ; 
and to this fact I feel that I am justified in ascribing, as I 
have already done, no small portion of the dissatisfac- 
tion which has grown out of the state of our relations 
with the North. The offensiveness of those protective 
enactments of which I have spoken grew not so much 
out of their directly oppressive effect in the South, as 
out of the stimulus they were calculated to give to 
Northern prosperity. It was felt or feared that they 
would increase a dependence on our part already too 
grievous to be borne. From this condition of things 
our people have become impatient to be free ; and this 
it is, as I am forced to believe, more truly than any 
other existing evil, which has caused the word disunion 
to be of late so often and so lightly spoken among us, 
and the thought of what it signifies to be contemplated 
with so little of horror. 

But unless I am entirely wrong in all my premises, dis- 
union would bring with it but a transfer of our depend- 
ence. The wealth with which we now enrich our North- 
ern brethren would be poured into the coffers of a foreign 
people. Other ships would carry our cotton, other 
brokers would speculate upon it, other merchants would 
send back to us the manufactured fabric for our con- 
sumption at home. And Northern hammers, Northern 
axes. Northern kettles, and Northern broomsticks would 
only give place to similar articles from foreign sources. 



liable to duty. Disunion, fellow-citizens, may bring with 
it many advantages which I am unable to discover ; but 
disunion, believe me, is not the road to independence. 
And it may serve to check the rash madness which would 
blindly plunge into this ruinous abyss, to become once 
satisfied that all the pictures of consequent prosperity 
and greatness with which its instigators amuse you, are 
baseless as the wildest visions shaped out by a delirious 
imagination in a fevered brain. 

By what means, then, shall we be independent ? By 
adopting the only course that could have made us so — 
could have saved us even from a dependence still more 
humiliating and degrading — if bountiful nature had not 
made us rich : by ceasing to buy of others every article, 
down to the smallest essential to human comfort, and 
learning at last to make something for ourselves. 

I am aware that there are great difficulties in the way 
of so radical a change of habits. We have at our disposal 
an immense amount of involuntary labor. Could that, 
or any considerable part of it, be turned with facility 
from agriculture to manufactures, the, problem would ad- 
mit of an easy solution. We have also a considerable 
amount of white labor distributed over our territory, 
engaged also in the cultivation of the ground. But this is 
unaccompanied by capital, deficient in intelligence, bound 
down in the struggle for a difificult subsistence to an un- 
varying routine, entirely unconcentrated, and incapable 
of self-concentration. 

If there is to be a change in the economical distribu- 
tion of labor among us, the initiative must be taken by 
those of our citizens who are able to be employers. Such 
have hitherto held themselves personally above labor — at 
least the labor of the hands. Whether this feeling has 
not been carried too far, admits of more than a question. 
Whether the true dignity of labor has not been under- 
valued, is worthy of our serious consideration. Our 
domestic institutions have powerfully contributed to 
keep the feeling alive. Wherever involuntary labor on 
a large scale exists, idleness is too apt to be confounded 
with respectability. And by the admission and recogni- 



24 

tion of a false social standard, a vast amount of the most 
productive descriptions of industry — the most productive 
because demanding the highest exercise of skill — is effec- 
tually ostracized, to make room for a class of men who, 
while idle themselves, complain that they are not pros- 
perous. 

There is nothing to prevent the successful introduction 
among us of every useful art. There are many things in 
our situation which give us great natural advantages over 
those to whom we are now accustomed to look for our 
supplies. The British prints and muslins in the shops of 
Tuscaloosa have, in one form or another, made a journey 
equal to a third part of the circumference of the globe. 
They have paid the expense of freights, commissions, 
insurances, and custom-house duties, and have come to 
us burthened with all these additions to their intrinsic 
value. Had the cotton grown in England, they would 
have been taxed but in one direction. Had the British 
cotton-mill been built in Alabama, the whole chain of 
impositions would have had no existence. 

Now I do not \vish to make any comment upon what 
any cotton-mill in Alabama has yet done ; but I do wish 
to call your attention to what a British mill transplanted 
here would be capable of doing. And in any statistical 
statements which I may here introduce, I wish you to 
understand that I put forth no vague and uncertain con- 
jectures hazarded by myself ; but I give you the results 
of experience, as ascertained by men who have been for 
many years engaged in forwarding your cotton to market, 
and in bringing to your doors the various products of 
Northern and foreign industry. Let, then, such a mill, 
constructed on the bold and liberal scale which distin- 
guishes the British factories, be set down on the banks of 
the Warrior, and furnished with the raw material at its 
own doors. In the first place, it could purchase its cot- 
ton at a cost permanently four cents per pound cheaper 
than at present, and would be able to turn out its fabrics 
at a corresponding reduction below the contemporaneous 
prices in Manchester. Secondly, these fabrics would be 
herein the midst of us, instead of being four thousand miles 



25 

away, and we should receive them free of any charge for 
freights, insurance, custom-house duties, or importers' 
profits. All these things, freight excepted, affect chiefly 
the finer and more costly goods. They impose a burthen, 
under our present revenue tariff, upon imported cottons 
laid down in the city of New York, of no less than 45 
per cent upon the prime cost. Our indirect mode of 
trading forces us to add to this the New York import- 
er's profit of I2|^ per cent, and the further expense of 
sending out here, of 10 per cent more — amounting in all 
to hardly less than 80 per cent taxation to you upon 
the New York imported cottons now on the shelves of 
your merchants in Tuscaloosa.* Supposing the direct 
trade substituted, however, there is still no escape from 
the permanent tax of nearly 50 per cent upon all your 
importations of manufactured cottons — a tax to be super- 
added to that which arises from the increased expense 
of the raw material. If the cost of running the mill 
would be any thing greater here, it would not be sufficient 
to affect materially the general result ; as is proved by 
the successful competition of the coarser New England 
muslins with those of Manchester in the London market ; 
while the current expenses of manufacturing are no 
greater here than in New England. 

The amount of British cottons, therefore, which our 
merchants now receive for every hundred dollars ex- 
pended through New York, could be furnished by a 
British mill, under British direction, on the banks of the 
Warrior, for fifty-five dollars ; while the mill-owner would 
pocket a handsome profit by the operation. 

Let us look into the effect of our policy upon some 
other of our important interests : 

Our importations of woollens, if made direct, are taxed 
to the extent of 55 per cent ; if introduced through the 
North, to no less than 92 per cent. 

Our Shefifield cutlery pays also 55 per cent, as directly 
imported ; and indirectly — that is, as usually, at present 
—92. 



* See note B. 



26 

Our hardware from Birmingham pays 75 per cent up 
to New York, and 117 here. 

Our crockery hollow ware is subject to the enormous 
burthen of 130 per cent in New York, and 200 to 300 in 
Tuscaloosa. 

The superior article of similar description, called gran- 
ite, is taxed 100 per cent to the Northern importer, and 
150 or upward to our own merchants. 

Common plates, and common cups and saucers, pay 
125 per cent in New York, and more than 200 here. 

Such are a few of the burdens to which the whole 
South placidly and contentedly submits, under a tariff 
constructed strictly with a view to revenue. Who would 
believe that a people, who can sit down calm as a sum- 
mer's morning under a system of taxation so utterly 
ruinous and so absolutely self-imposed, could be roused 
to fury by the addition of 10 or 20 per cent duty to the 
revenue standard ; more especially when that very addi- 
tion is designed to break up this most pernicious system 
of national improvidence, by which our wealth is swal- 
lowed up as fast as it is made. 

But to return to our hypothetical cotton-mill. If Brit- 
ish enterprise could produce the results which I have 
stated here, in the very midst of us, why may not we go 
and do likewise ? I anticipate the answer. We have not 
the experience, we have not the skill, we have not the 
tact to adapt our fabrics to the condition of the market. 
If we build the mill, set up the machinery, and plunge 
into the manufacture, we shall flounder like one who 
ventures beyond his depth without having learned to 
swim ; we shall make shipwreck of our capital, and 
squander our toil^ — we shall spend our money for that 
which is not bread, and our labor for that which satisfi- 
eth not. So shall the last state of Alabama be worse than 
the first. To this I reply that the answer is a good one 
so far as it goes, and perfectly satisfactory but for a 
single oversight. The native Southern man who never 
saw a cotton-mill is no more to be supposed competent 
to direct one, than any individual of this audience, se- 
lected at random, is to be presumed capable of playing 



27 

the violin the first time the instrument is put into his 
hands. We have not at present the experience and skill, 
it is admitted. What then ? We must import them. 
We must not only erect the mills and purchase the ma- 
chinery, but we must bring here also the men who are to 
manage them. This is the absolute and only condition 
of success. If it were not so, every thing which I have 
said of the value of skill would be founded in false phi- 
losophy. All special education, of every kind, would be 
worthless, and we should be compelled to admit the ab- 
surdity, that whatever any one man can do, every other 
can do as well. 

Take a simple illustration. Our splendid rivers are 
navigated by hundreds of steamers, liearing the rich pro- 
ducts of our soil to our ports, and bringing back the im- 
mense amounts of imported goods which we now annually 
consume. This was not always so. The early naviga- 
tion of the rivers, not of this only, but of every land, 
was conducted in slow-sailing sloops and schooners, and 
still more sluggish and uncouth flat-boats and barges. 
The application of steam to locomotion on the water 
was a triumph of human perseverance and invention, of 
inap|3reciable value. Its introduction upon the rapid 
rivers of the South was a measure which immediately 
assumed the importance of an absolute necessity. It was 
introduced ; but no man dreamed of the folly of putting 
engines of such enormous power, surrounded with so 
fearful dangers, into the hands of men unacquainted 
with their construction and unpractised in their manage- 
ment. The necessity of importing, along with the new 
power, the heads and hands which were competent to 
govern it, was palpable to all. 

The application is obvious. If we would build up 
any art among us, we must bring here not merely the 
brute machines which are necessary to its operations, 
but the practised skill which can turn them to good 
account. 

I do not mean that our master workmen and superin- 
tendents must always be aliens to our soil. By no means. 
When any branch of industry shall have obtained a secure 



footing among us, hundreds of native artisans will spring 
up to give it direction. Our first establishments will be 
our normal schools of industry ; but we shall no longer 
need foreign guidance when we are once able to go alone, 

I see nothing objectionable in this proposition. It is 
no discredit to us that we are deficient in knowledge ; 
but if we refuse to learn, we shall be highly censurable. 
Some may be disposed to repel the idea of calling in aid 
from a quarter which they deem unfriendly. To such I 
would cite the familiar Roman maxim, the wisdom of 
which has been admitted by all succeeding ages, "Fas 
est ct ab Jiostc doccri !'' — it is good policy to learn even 
of our enemies. Let us act upon this principle — let us 
endeavor to diversify the applications of our industry 
without ever attempting, unguided by experience, tasks 
to which none among us have ever been educated — -and 
we shall very soon attain to that real and substantial in- 
dependence, which nothing in Federal legislation can 
ever undermine. 

Other incidental but important advantages would flow 
from the adoption of this policy. Instead of a sparsely 
scattered population, we should presently see thriving 
towns and villages springing up throughout our territory ; 
thus multiplying everywhere the blessings of social life. 
Better schools and more of them would be brought to the 
doors of almost every family. Feeble churches would 
grow strong ; and to thousands, who now never so much 
as hear the sound of the church-going bell, would be 
regularly proclaimed the glad tidings of salvation. By 
the more intimate and constant contact of man with 
man, the courtesies of life would come to be more re- 
garded, manners would be softened, and tastes culti- 
vated to a higher degree of refinement. Associations for 
intellectual improvement would become possible. Libra- 
ries, reading-rooms, forensic clubs, lecture-halls, and all 
the various means by which a busy population is able to 
mingle instruction with entertainment, would come into 
existence in a thousand places. Our people would thus 
become not only richer, but more polished, more en- 
lightened, and better, at the same time. 



29 

Moreover, our population would go on increasing in 
numbers in a higher ratio than heretofore. The tide of 
immigration from abroad has hitherto flowed ahnost 
exclusively over the States of the North. The reason 
has been, that the cotton-growing States have been able 
to offer no inducements to turn it aside. Southern agri- 
culture is ill adapted to European hands — and what occu- 
pation but agriculture has the South had to offer ? Here 
and there, where an unfrequent railroad has presented 
occasional employment, the sturdy arms of Irish or Ger- 
man excavators have been called on for their aid ; but 
nowhere has there existed a demand steady enough to 
secure an unbroken inward current. Let the arts lift up 
their heads among us, and all this will be changed. We 
shall attract to ourselves at least our share of that great 
influx from abroad, which now goes to swell exclusively 
the immense Northern sea of human life ; and we shall 
assimilate to ourselves, and convert into defenders, thou- 
sands and tens of thousands of those who would else fall 
naturally into th§ ranks of our assailants. 

The effect of this would be twofold. It would detract 
something from the increase of Northern population, 
and add something to ours. In the progress of years 
this process would distinctly tell upon the relative num- 
bers of the two great sections of the Union ; and our 
relative strength in the councils of the nation would 
steadily increase. 

Time will not permit me to follow these ideas further. 
But I cannot close without suggesting one additional 
consideration in favor of the policy I have been recom- 
mending. The South is rich to-day, because the prod- 
uct of her industry is in increasing demand. But as 
that product is single, her riches have no firmer basis 
than the permanence of the demand which creates them. 
Let cotton give place, even partially, to other materials, 
in the manufacture of textile fabrics, and a deathblow 
will be given to the cotton-growing industry of America. 
A suggestion like this may perhaps excite a smile from 
those who hear me ; and yet it is neither absurd nor im- 
possible — perhaps not even improbable. This is mani- 



30 

fest from considering the history of cotton itself. A 
century ago this article had no commercial importance 
at all in the markets of the world. In 1 741, 4000 bales 
was the total amount imported from all sources into the 
British islands. In 1760, the value of all the British 
manufactured cottons put together did not reach one 
million of dollars. At the close of the war of the Ameri- 
can Revolution, Great Britain manufactured, still, less 
than 25,000 bales per annum. In forty years she had 
scarcely increased her operations by 20,000 bales. Had 
an Englishman at this time predicted before a London 
audience that in the year 1850 any serious interruption 
to the cotton manufacture of England would be suf^cient 
to endanger the security of the sovereign on her throne, 
and jDossibly to shatter into fragments the empire itself, 
his prediction would have been met with the same in- 
credulous smile with which you may be disposed to re- 
ceive my suggestion of to-day. 

Why may not something else supersede cotton in the 
manufacture of woven goods ? Because, you will reply, 
nothing else can possibly compete with it in cheapness. 
But cotton was not always cheap. It was known and used 
in Europe for a century or more before it could com- 
pete with wool or flax. How did it acquire this new 
quality, which has given to its manufacture an importance 
second perhaps to that of none other existing in the 
whole range of human industry ? By the simple exercise 
of a little ingenuity in improving the methods of sepa- 
rating it from the seed. 

Why may not similar ingenuity be yet exerted upon 
other materials, with similar success ? It is affirmed that 
this is likely to be done in the case of flax. A process 
has been invented, which is said to be entirely success- 
ful, by means of which the fibre of the plant is made 
to resemble most completely, in appearance and mechan- 
ical properties, cotton prepared for spinning. So remark- 
able is the similarity, that it may be spun by the same 
machinery, with nearly or quite the same facility, as cot- 
ton itself ; and to come at once to the point of princi- 
pal interest, the manufactured product is fully as cheap. 



31 

Such are the statements which have thus far reached us. 
It remains to be seen to what degree they will be verified 
by more extensive experiment. 

But, it may be asked, where is the raw material to be 
obtained in quantity to compare with the three millions 
or more of bales of cotton now supplied by the two 
Americas, India, and Egypt ? There will be no difficulty 
on this head. It will come if it is wanted. The cotton- 
growing regions are mere patches on the face of the 
earth compared with those which are adapted to the 
culture of flax. It is that fact indeed which gives to 
us our present enormous advantage.* Now suppose a 
competition of this formidable character to spring up 
against our great staple. The arm of our present 
strength will be paralyzed, and national ruin will come 
upon us like a thief in the night. Even now we experi- 
ence disastrous effects from occasional and temporary 
depression of prices. What may we not anticipate when 
prices fall permanently below the cost of production ? 

I do not undertake to say that this danger is immedi- 
ately upon us. It is by no means ascertained that the 
present experiment will succeed. But the fact that such 
experiments are possible, and that some one may sooner 
or later put at hazard our most vital interests, warns us 
significantly of the folly of embarking all our fortunes in 
a single bottom. If by diversifying our labor, if by 
cultivating amongst us all those useful arts by which 
wealth is retained at home, and accumulated where it is 
retained, we arrive at that substantial independence to 
which wisdom teaches us to aspire, we shall be prepared 
for any reverse which afTects but a single interest. Pov- 
erty or riches, want or abundance, will no longer depend 
for us upon the turning of a die. Strong in the multi- 
tude of our resources, we shall always be prepared for 
what the morrow may bring forth. We shall no longer 
seem to ourselves to be accumulating food for cormo- 
rants to feed on, or lavishing upon others the aliment 
which should fatten ourselves. 



* See note C. 



32 

Perhaps, when we shall have familiarized ourselves with 
the same pursuits which have made our Northern breth- 
ren prosperous, and when all parts of our common 
country shall be more nearly assimilated in interests, we 
shall find fewer causes of contention in the halls of our 
national legislature, and fewer occasions for asperity in the 
language we apply to each other. Perhaps we shall be- 
come more truly in fact what our fathers were before us, 
and what we too are still in name— a united people. 

But if this may not be, if the lamentable schisms which 
divide us are fated to grow wider and wider, if we are 
doomed to see the glorious flag of our republic rent in 
twain, and the fair temple of liberty in which we have so 
long worshipped together given over dismantled to crum- 
ble into ruin, then at least may we of the South feel, in 
that day of darkness, that we have within ourselves every 
element of an empire, and ^that when we decree our 
separation from our Northern brethern, we are truly 
independent of all the world. 

Decree our separation ! On this unwelcome theme 
permit me for one moment to dwell. Permit me, before 
I conclude, to add one word of warning, one word of 
entreaty, one word of deep, earnest, most certainly patri- 
otic, conviction. For what should we decree our separa- 
tion ? That the broad barrier of the Constitution, which 
now forms our impregnable rampart against the rabid 
abolitionism of England, and the no less dangerous so- 
cialism of France, may be broken down, and leave us 
exposed to formidable assaults upon all our boundaries, 
and vexatious annoyances in all our intercourse with the 
world ? That the combined fanaticism of all Christen- 
dom may plot unmolested against our peace, may harass 
all our borders with marauding incursions, and instigate 
servile war in the very heart of our quiet land ? That 
the obligation to respect, protect, and restore our prop- 
erty, which now shields our widely exposed Northern 
frontier — an obligation not cheerfully fulfilled, if you 
please, but still an obligation, and still — mark that — 
fulfilled, nevertheless — may be utterly swept away, to 
give place to a never-ceasing border war expanding at 



33 
frequent intervals into general hostilities? Is it for 
these things that we are to decree our separation? If 
not, then for what other, and for what better ? 

What was it I heard ? A foreign alliance ? Did some 
one seem to say that Britain, in terror of her operatives 
and dependant on the cotton-growing States for her only 
security against convulsion, would gladly receive us un- 
der the shadow of her wing ? Did I hear the remark that 
this all-powerful mistress of the waves would eagerly 
seize the proffered privilege of fighting for us our baUles 
against the North, and that a British line-of-battle ship 
off. the harbor of Charleston would blow the revenue- 
cutters of the Union— aye, and the frigates too— like so 
many fishing smacks, out of the water? If I did not 
hear that language here I have heard it elsewhere. And 
shall we yield ourselves up to so fatal a delusion as this ? 
Great Britain needs your cotton, you say, and therefore 
she will help you. And this remark you make of the 
grand robber of the civilized world— a nation whose 
career has been signalized by depredation wherever her 
adventurers have penetrated and wherever her flag has 
flown, whose cry, like that of the daughters oi the 
horse-leech, has been everywhere, "Give, give"— a na- 
tion whose track over India and the farthest East has 
been marked by bloodshed, rapine and plunder, the 
gripe of whose covetous hand your own fathers felt at 
their throats, and who would now be fattening herself 
upon your life-blood also, but for that devoted heroism 
in them which we are assembled this day to commemo- 
rate. And this nation it is which you expect to give 
you something. Deceive not yourselves, fellow-citizens. 
Great Britain never gives where she has the power to 
take. She needs your cotton— granted. You need her 
manufactures— she knows it. If she must buy or perish 
you must sell or starve. And which, in a contest of this 
kind, do you think has power to hold out the longest ? 
Certainly not you. But suppose you have ; will this bring 
her to your terms ? You seem to imagine that if you 
will not willingly give her your cotton she cannot get it 
Inconceivable error ! You tell us that her very exist- 



34 
ence is at stake if you stop her mills. Grant this to be 
true, and I tell you that you cannot stop them. Instead 
of coming to your terms, she will force you to hers. 
You say she fears the rabble of her unemployed opera- 
tives. What is to prevent her turning that rabble loose 
upon you ? Do I hear you say that you will never be 
wanting to the vindication of your independence and the 
defence of your firesides ? I hope not ; yet my heart 
sickens when I meet, at every turn, still the same trum- 
pet-cry of conflict, still the same menace of blood ! 

But you answer, triumphantly, England will sooner 
make terms than fight. War is fearfully expensive, and 
England totters on the verge of national bankruptcy. 
True — and therein lies the very hopelessness of the case. 
England cannot come to terms with you without fighting 
an enemy more formidable than you will be^ — the confed- 
erated states from w^hich you will have torn yourselves 
away. Unfortunately the army, the navy, all the stores 
and munitions of war, the custom-houses of the great 
sea-ports, and, more than all, the immense superiority of 
numbers, w^ill remain on the side of the confederacy. 
You propose that England shall become your ally in the 
war. Mercenary England always counts the cost, the 
more especially since she has no money to throw away. 
What is to prevent her becoming the ally of the North 
against you ? Certainly this would be her cheapest, her 
surest, her most direct route to the object of her wishes. 
Ai)d the cotton which you expect her to buy on your 
terms she will force you to sell on her own. Nor will it 
constitute the slightest objection to such a proceeding in 
her eyes, that while with one hand she grasps your cot- 
ton, with the other she may liberate your slaves. 

These remarks may not be acceptable, but are they 
not true ? And if they are, is it not necessary that such 
truths should be plainly spoken and deeply pondered ? 
Decree our separation ! If it is for this, or any thing like 
this, that we are to be delivered from our [)resent griev- 
ances, better, far better, is it that we 

" Bear those ills we have, 
Than fly to others that we know not of." 



35 
And are we to consider ourselves alone ? Is nothing 
due to that subHme mission which has been confided to 
us, the propagation and universal diffusion of free princi- 
ples throughout the world ? Shall we esteem as of no 
account the prayers of the manacled thousands in other 
and less happy lands who are stretching out their hands 
to us and imploring us not to extinguish the fires upon 
the only altars of pure liberty beneath the arch of 
heaven ? Is this peaceful asylum of the persecuted of all 
countries to be converted into a pandemonium of anarchy 
and carnage, where life is even less secure than in the 
blood-stained domains of despotism whence they have 
fled ? 

Decree our separation ! For any cause that has yet 
arisen, be the thought cast out with loathing and horror ' 
Decree our separation ! While the constitution still con- 
tinues to throw over us its sheltering shield let not the 
suggestion dare again to intrude upon our minds ! De- 
cree our separation 1 God in His infinite mercy forbid ! 



NOTES 



Note A. 

{^Referred to on poi^e 12.) 

The view here taken of the real causes which have led to the existing 
war upon the Union has not perhaps been before distinctly presented 
out of South Carolina, but within that State all affectation of concealment 
on the subject is at length laid aside. The following is from a recent 
number of the Charleston Mercitrv : 



" Many of our resistance friends argue as if the sole purpose of oar tak- 
ing issue 7uith the Federal Government was the proteetion and viaintenanee 
of the institution of slavery. Hence, they reason, secession is not the 
best method of effecting our object. Tliis is a narrow, and, as 7ve think, a 
very erroneous, vie7v of the whole matter. The INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY 
WAS NOT THE ITRST, nor will it be the last, interest of the South assailed 
by the Government. The struggle in which we are involved is not for the 
defence ol one interest but every interest vital to freedom. It is for lib- 
erty itself. The institution has been assailed because that was one of the 
most efifectual ways of depriving us of independence, and because by 
SUBMISSION TO OTHER ENCROACHMENTS 7ve have made the North believe 
7ve could be assailed 7vith impunity. 

" We do not govern ourselves, but are governed, and, as Langdon 
Cheves forcibly says, "governed by our bitter enemies." Being ruled, 
our rulers have thought fit to interfere with the institution of slavery. It 
was one way, and a most effectual one, of expressing their hostility. But 
if 've had not PREVIOUSLY submitted to be i[07'erned by those t.'/zc no'(.' assail 
this institution, it would never have been assailed. The attempt to overthrow 
'\t is a consequence tnerely of rhe political inferiority imposed upon us, and 
submitted to J)y us, through PREVIOUS legislation. If 'we had maintained 
our equality in THE vital MATTER OF the imposition and expenditure 
of taxes we should never have been attacked on the side of our domes- 
tic institutions. The general government, thus checked, and kept within 
the limits of the general purposes for which it was established, could 
not have become the government of a section, and no sectional warfare 
on slavery could ever have been made by Congress. 

"" But 7ue submitted to sectional legislation ///THE IMPOSITION AND DIS- 
BURSEMENT OF TAXES. The next stride was natural, if not inevitable, sec- 
tional legislation against that interest that most definitely and strongly 
distinguished the sections from each other. IVe surrendoed our liberties 
WHEN WE SUBMITTED TO PAY TAXES levied by the North openly and avo7u- 
edly to advance their 07un interests. Hf.RE was our FALL— alas, what a 
fall!- for a fiee people in a Confederacy, the vital principle of which 
was equality ! 

" If the IN.STITUTION of slavery had never existed, OR NEVER 
BEEN ASSAILED, the Union, as it H07V is, 7uould be an INTOLERABLE DESPO- 
TISM, 7uhich ought either to be reformed or ABOLISHED." 



37 

This writer very candidly avows that the aggressions upon our rights as 
slaveholders are not the sole, nor even the principal, grievances for which 
secession is urged as a remedy. They have been found a very effectual — 
in fact the only efifectual — means of creating a popular ferment out of 
South Carolina ; but now, when the feeling is presumed to be up, the in- 
stigators uncover the old sore and tell us that " we surrendered our lib- 
erties when we submitted to pay taxes," with much more of the same 
kind. The " previous legislation" of twenty years ago, then, is still the 
great grievance in South Carolina. Suppose our Alabama secessionists 
should preach the same'doctrine ; what success would they meet with ? 

The writer of the Mercury seems to take it for granted that the Federal 
Government systematically oppresses South Carolina — not with any very 
definite object in view, but simply for the gratification it affords. He 
assumes a settled enmity to exist toward his state on the part of every 
body north of Mason & Dixon's line, and declares that the Union 
ought to be abolished, independently of any controversy about slavery ! 
This is tolerably distinct, significant, intelligible. Will Alabama volun- 
teer to help South Carolina fight over again her old nullification quarrel ? 



Note B. 
{Referred to on page 25.) 

EXPENSE OF DIRECT IMPORTATION. 

Cotton goods, prime cost %i 00 

Duty, 25 per cent 25 

Commissions in England 5 

Receiving and forwarding commissions, cartage, dock 

dues, cases, etc 10 

Insurance, freight, etc 5 

Cost, as directly imported $1 45 

ADDITIONAL EXPENSES — INDIRECT IMPORTATION. 

Cost as laid down in New York $1-45 

Twelve and one half per cent, importer's profit j 8 

New York cost to Alabama merchant $1 63 

Ten per cent expenses out 163 

Cost in Tuscaloosa $1 793 



Note C. 

(Referred to on page 31). 

The most recent accounts whch have appeared in this country in regard 
to Mr. Claussen's process for the preparation and manufacture or fiax 
have been contained in the London letters to the editor of the New York 



38 

Tiihutie. In regard to the economical question, Mr. Claussen's state- 
ments are given as follows : 

" He says the flax straw, or the ripe, dry plant, as it comes from the 
field, with the seed taken off, may be grown even in England for |;ioper 
ton ; but he will concede its cost for the present to be $15 per ton, deliv- 
ered, as it is necessary that liberal inducements shall be given [for its ex- 
tensive cultivation. Six tons of the straw or flax in the bundle will yield 
one ton of dressed and clean fibre, the cost of dressing which by this 
method, so as to make it flax-cotton, is $35 per ton. (Our superior West- 
ern machinery ought considerably to reduce this.) The total cost of the 
flax-cotton, therefore, will be $125 per ton, or six cents per pound, while 
flax, as it comes from the field, is worth I15 per ton ; should this come 
down to |io per ton, the cost of the fibre will be reduced to I95 per ton. 
or less than five cents per pound." 

" Mr. Claussen's process, it is said, requires but three hours for its 
completion. It takes the flax as it came from the field, only somewhat 
drier, and with the seed beaten off, and renders it thoroughly fit for break- 
ing. The plant is allowed to ripen before it is harvested, so that the seed 
is all saved, while the tediousness and injury to the fibre, not to speak 
of the unwholesomeness of the old-fashioned rotting processes, are en- 
tirely obviated. Where warmth is desirable in the fabrics contemplated, 
the staple is made to resemble wool quite closely. Specimens dyed red, 
blue, yellow, etc., are exhibited to show how readily and satisfactorily 
the flax cotton takes any color that may be desired. Beside these lie rolls 
of flannels, feltings, and almost every variety of plain textures, fabricated 
wholly or in good part from flax as prepared for spinning under Mr. 
Claussen's [patent, proving the adaptation of this fibre to almost every 
use now subserved by either cotton or wool. The mixtures of cotton 
and flax, flax-cotton and wool, are excellent and serviceable fabrics." 



INDEPENDENCE ODE. 

yVriitcn for the celebration at Tiisealoosa, Ala., Jittv .\fh, 1851. 



3Y I'ROF. F. A. V. BARNARD. 



'Tis the day of freedom's birth ; 
Fling her starry banner forth ; 
Let it wave, from South to North, 

In her own blue sky. 
Floating wide, from sea to sea, 
On the breath of liberty. 
Let that glorious standard be 

Ever borne on high. 

Who its onward course would bar ? 
Who its lustrous folds would mar? 
Who "oould blot away a sta> V 

Let him come not near. 
Who would bear it proudly on, 
Till its world-wide course is run ? 
Of his sire, a worthy son. 

Let him join us here. 

By that sainted hero, sage. 
Whose great deeds— our heritage- 
Fill with brightness hist'ry's page. 

By our Washington. 
We will cling, til! hope expires. 
To the charter of our sires. 
With a grasp that never tires. 

Till our course is run. 



7/ 



i 



